Conclusion
As internet access becomes more readily available in outpatient clinics and hospital wards, the web is rapidly becoming an important clinical tool for doctors. The use of web based searching may help doctors to diagnose difficult cases.

Footnotes

An extra table is on bmj.com

This article was posted on bmj.com on [INSERT DATE OF PUBLICATION]: http://bmj.com/cgi/doi/10.1136/bmj.39003.640567.AE

Contributors: HT had the idea and designed the study. JHKN helped in the study design. Both authors did the search and analysis and wrote the paper. HT is the guarantor.

Funding: None.

Competing interests: None declared.

Ethical approval: Not sought. The subjects were published cases in the New England Journal of Medicine with no patient identifiers.